The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO) extracts and condenses the material that follows from Mexican and Central and South American on-line media sources on a daily basis. You are free to disseminate this information, but we request that you credit NAFBPO as being the provider.

This past week, Edelmiro Cavazos, the 38-year-old mayor of Santiago, Nuevo Leon, an upscale tourist town near Monterrey, was kidnapped from his own home. Three days later his body was found. He had died by gunfire and had signs of torture. Last Friday, six police agents were arrested for their presumed participation in the crime. Some are accused of being lookouts while the others carried out the abduction. Among those arrested was the mayor’s own personal bodyguard who was ostensibly abducted with him and then released, but “had no signs of physical mistreatment, not one scratch.” Interrogation of those arrested led to the arrest of a seventh man and then to a raid on a house in which four more suspects were arrested while at least 17 managed to escape.

Bogota, Colombia – Colombian and US police agents captured Venezuelan narcotrafficker Walid Makled Garcia, “El Arabe,,” one of the most wanted drug bosses in Venezuela and under an international warrant of arrest for murder. He is a suspect in the 2008 assassination of one of his associates, Wilber Alirio Varela, “Jabon,” and also for the murder of Venezuelan attorney and journalist Orel Zambrano in 2009. According to local police, Garcia is chief of one of the most powerful criminal organizations in South America and has connections with the Colombian rebel group, FARC.

San Salvador – Tipped off by an arrest by Nicaraguan police last November, Salvadoran National Police (PNC) launched an investigation that led to the dismantling of a cocaine smuggling network using two Salvadoran tour businesses. The 2009 Nicaraguan arrests involved two passengers of a Salvadoran tour bus who were in possession of 286 kilos of cocaine. The PNC began surveillance of two suspected tour businesses and noted that some passengers not only made repeated tour bus trips, but were either relatives of the business owners or employees. The suspicions led to the arrest of seven people for drug trafficking. The group carried drugs in bus luggage compartment on trips from Panama to Guatemala, where it is presumed the loads were turned over to others to be transported through Mexico to the US. According to the PNC, a Colombian, not identified, was head of the smuggling operation. All those arrested were Salvadorans.

Soldiers of the Mexican Army seized more than 1.5 tons of packaged marihuana in two operations carried out in the towns of Nuevo Laredo and Miguel Aleman, Tamaulipas. The separate operations took place along the Rio Grande separating the states of Tamaulipas and Texas.

Romania is preparing for the repatriation of a total of 371 gypsies after the French government decided to send them back to their country of origin due to the problems their illegal settlements cause in France. Certain human rights groups have declared the measures France has taken against the gypsy settlements to be racist. France counters that the gypsy settlements are against community laws and have caused the same problems in Italy. Romania, however, has been cautious in its statements and takes the position of defending the rights of its citizens to travel freely throughout the European Union. Both Romania and Bulgaria, the poorest European countries, have large populations of gypsies living at the poverty level.

In Venezuela, 19,133 assassinations were reported in 2009, putting the rate of homicides at 75 for every 100,000 inhabitants, according to a study by the Venezuelan National Institute of Statistics. The Venezuelan newspaper El National (Caracas) compared the country’s homicide rate with those of Colombia – a country with an armed conflict – where the rate is 32 per 100,000 inhabitants and with Mexico with 8 per 100,000. President Hugo Chavez said the publication of the controversial data was to form part of the “conspiracy” against his government in upcoming elections.

Presence of Hispanics in New Orleans generating social tension and distrust

Washington (Notimex) – The increasing arrival of Hispanics in New Orleans is gradually changing the racial lines of the city and generating tensions within the African-American population, the Washington Post reported today. Defined for many years as a city of whites and blacks, the presence of Hispanics has given rise to complaints by residents that they are being “displaced” and their jobs and “status” are now threatened. The Hispanic influx after hurricane Katrina was triggered by the arrival of hundreds of workers from other states to participate in the reconstruction of the city. Although many have returned to their previous places of residence, others have decided to put down roots in New Orleans.

Other factors have also contributed to the local distrust of this new segment of the population. Authorities of one subdivision tried to limit the number of people who can reside in a house, an action some critics said was directed at the Hispanics. Another prohibited mobile taco vendors and a state legislator is considering a bill authorizing the local police to verify the migratory status of detained Hispanics. Uneasiness for this persistent flow of Hispanics into the city is expressed on opinion programs by residents who blame them for taking jobs and lowering salaries. One African-American who lives in one of the hardest hit districts of the city said he understands the distrust toward the Hispanics, but does not blame them for taking jobs others refuse. “They even work on holidays. I’m not going to work on a day of rest,” he said, pointing out that many who accuse the Hispanics of taking jobs from them do nothing to look for work.

Three vehicles abandoned in the Otay Vista area of Tijuana were found to contain a total of more than two tons of packaged marihuana. According to a Mexican Army spokesman, the discovery was the result of a citizen report that the three vehicles parked on Vista Bonita street were emitting a strong odor of marihuana. No arrests were reported.

An “incredible” discovery of nearly 300,000 marihuana plants was made by Mexican federal agents in the mountains west of Laguna Salada and south of La Rumorosa grade in Baja California. The field was on a hillside nearly inaccessible except by helicopter. Agents were delivered to the area by air and then located the field on foot. They destroyed the crop in place because it would have been extremely difficult to remove it. The plants were irrigated by a system using water captured in containers. No arrests were made.

Chiapas, Mexico – A total of 61 undocumented immigrants from Guatemala and Ecuador were detained while being guided by smugglers in a wooded zone of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, according to Mexican immigration officials (INM). The office received a call reporting the smuggling operation Friday night and dispatched agents to the area where they made the arrests. The two guides escaped, but the 61 aliens were taken into custody for processing. There were 53 Guatemalans and 8 Ecuadorians. More than 500,000 foreigners enter Mexico illegally each year en route to the US, according to the National Commission for Human Rights.

The Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations (SRE) documented a series of “hate attacks” between September 2009 and July 2010 carried out against Mexicans who live and work in New York. Between April and July of this year, authorities have reported a total of 11 such attacks. The aggressors were mostly African American. One man attacked 11 months ago by three African Americans in Brooklyn, NY, only because he was Mexican, lost his ability to speak and walks with difficulty.

New York is only one place where racial tensions are rising. Five years ago, hundreds of undocumented Mexicans came to New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. They were well received because they provided cheap labor. Today things are different. A Republican legislator, Joe Harrison, renewed his attempt to introduce and pass a bill (HB 1215) that seeks to criminalize the presence of undocumented immigrants in Louisiana. It is the example of Arizona that ever more finds sympathizers among a population bothered by the presence of these same “illegals” and their families who, five years ago, rescued their city.

“These workers, mainly of Mexican origin, have changed the demographic complexion of New Orleans by converting it to a city where the enchilada has become as common as jambalaya,” asserted Jose Torres Tama, an Ecuadorian artist and writer who has resided in New Orleans since 1984.

Women have taken a major part in organized crime operations in Cd. Juarez, mainly because of unemployment, as well as pressures from their husbands or boyfriends and the impunity that exists. Most of them are used to transport drugs, arms and money from one point to another, but some become hired “hit-women” and others, actual leaders of crime cells. They turn to crime because of the job opportunities, but also for some, the attraction of the life style of the narcotrafficker, according to an analysis by several authorities.

Police in Cuernavaca, state capital of Morelos, were alerted that an organized crime group had decapitated and hung the bodies of four men from a bridge over a highway to the city. Arriving at the scene, police found the bodies of four young men, estimated ages 20 -25, hanging headless, upside down, from the bridge with hands and feet tied and their genitals mutilated. Their heads were left on the pavement of the highway and their genitals were found hanging over a narco-message.